


in absentia.

by hellsinki



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Multi, Wolfgang-centric, and cry for him all the time, heavy angst but with a happy ending, probably the most wolfgang-centric fic in this fandom, rated for angst and mentions of torture, set after S2 finale, should that be a warning?, very self-indulgent cos i LOVE wolfgang so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsinki/pseuds/hellsinki
Summary: Some things in our lives are inevitable.Like this endless cycle of loss and revenge. Get hit and hit back. Get knocked down and drag them all down with you, then get back to your feet and fight your way through each fucking day. To finally get to this point, to finally get home, to finally have this.It’s worth it.The cluster takes Wolfgang back. Will contemplates on Wolfgang's special position within the cluster, and how his absence was felt to be more catastrophic than the rest of them. Felix is there too. Now they get ready for revenge.





	in absentia.

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever Sense8 fic, and it's a tribute to Wolfgang, the beautiful German safecracker with a character so complex that I could spend years trying to describe it (and fail). Very self-indulgent, I guess, unless you, too, love Wolfgang above everything else, lol. English is not my native language, so if there is any mistakes that's bothering you, let me know and I'll fix it right away. Hope you enjoy reading! <3

 

He knows pain. He knows bruises that last as long as a month on pallid skin. He knows the taste of blood no amount of alcohol can ever wash off. He knows broken bones that sometimes don’t properly heal. He knows tears sliding down a sore throat instead of rolling down a purpled cheek. He knows split lips and sleepless nights and paranoia eating away at his sanity all day long. He knows all these and then some. 

  
But he doesn’t know suffering.    
  
He lived pain, wore it like second skin, but never suffered. Suffering didn’t belong to him. It was from the outside. He wasn’t in touch with the outside. Except where Felix was concerned. And perhaps he did get a taste of acute suffering when Felix got shot and spent a few days in a coma. But he forgot all about it as soon as Felix woke up.  
  
He doesn’t know _this_ suffering. He doesn’t know how to cope. He doesn’t know where to escape. He’s trapped inside his own mind. He feels betrayed by what was supposed to be his safe citadel and which is now a war zone, electric current and chronic pain hacking away at the layers of his consciousness like he is a sacrificial lamb strapped down to an altar before a vengeful god.

  
He feels...like he has fallen apart, severed limbs and cut-off toes lying in a bloody mess on the ground, and people he wished he could kill by the stinging rancour in his eyes step on them and he can never get back up.  
  
_There are worse things than dying._ And this suffering, this inability to protect the ones he loves, this throwing up in his blood-soaked mouth at the realization that _he_ is the one putting the ones he loves in danger, is the fucking worst.  
  
He doesn’t know death, but every second under torture with Whispers’ satisfied face looming over his blurred vision, he wishes that he already did, over and over again.

  


*******

 

Wolfgang was, _is_ , their ruthless killer. The one with no regrets, no guilty conscience, no hesitance. The practical one, the clinical one, the one with no attachment to any ethical bullshit.

Will has a theory. If every Sensate in his cluster was to represent one of the seven heavenly virtues, then Kala would be temperance, Nomi prudence, Capheus courage, Riley faith, Sun hope, Lito love, and Will himself would be justice. And Wolfgang? He would be the absence of a virtue. An absence that at times was felt stronger than any presence. When Will needed someone to crash a van into a helicopter without a second thought, Wolfgang was there to do it for him. When Kala needed someone to take her mind away from the pressure of having to sleep with someone she did not love, did not feel any sexual desire for, Wolfgang was there to take her on a fantastic sexual journey. When Lito needed someone to be on a higher level of brutality than Joaquin, Wolfgang was there to do his dirty fight for him. When Sun wished she could stop hoping that her brother would someday become the boy her mother thought to be deserving of taking care of, Wolfgang was there to assure her the world was better off without her brother in it. Every time the cluster needed to do something that went against their principles and values, they could always rely on Wolfgang and his clinical, practical mind to either do it for them or convince them to do it themselves.

In a sense, Wolfgang is the negating force in their equations.

It isn’t just that Wolfgang is _able_ to punch so hard to break jaws, or snap necks with a chain, or shoot with insane accuracy between someone’s eyes; it is more about the fact that he is _willing_ to do them, no questions asked, no complicated feelings involved.

Wolfgang is so unapologetic in his clinical brutality that the cluster can go on believing they are still the better person in every fight, because as the traditional narrative goes, the good always win, and they are good. And they always win. Wolfgang makes sure of that.

And now, without him, everything has been thrown off balance.

Which brings Will to another theory. He has been thinking about Wolfgang a lot. Especially after he was taken by Whispers. Somehow, being consumed by the thoughts of him, being dragged into the black hole left in his absence, being driven crazy by the overwhelming weight of nothingness crushing all the bones in his skull, is inexorable, is subliminal, is everything he can do as he plots and executes and kills time.

Wolfgang has somehow become the centerpiece of the cluster. The gravitational field. The pillar holding the whole structure together. Kala says maybe it feels that way because of Wolfgang’s forceful presence, the intensity by which he does everything, the commanding way in which he exists. His status as the king of Berlin, which he couldn't really escape even if he had turned down the offer to become one, bleeding through his relationships with his cluster.

Nomi thinks it’s because of the fact that Wolfgang is never the one reaching out for them, so the others have to reach out to him, to move toward his direction to be able to embrace his presence. When she says that, she is thinking about the whirlpool in Berlin, the cluster’s first-time orgy. Will remembers the itch under his skin, the buzz inside his skull, the trembles in his limbs, to get close to Wolfgang’s still and naked body resting in the water like an oil painting; to touch every inch of him, to drag his mouth across his stubbled cheek and over the broad plain of his shoulder; to feel him throb like a pulse, an ache, a terrible addiction infecting his blood that he is reluctant to get rid of.

Maybe Nomi is right. And Kala, too. But Will still thinks there is more to it than that. There is always more to everything concerning Wolfgang. Riley says it’s different. His absence feels different. Different from when Nomi and probably when she herself were captured by the BPO. Different from when Will was high on heroin and his connection with the cluster was severed. And different from when Sun was being hanged, and although that too felt like dying, like nothing the cluster had ever felt before, this thing with Wolfgang...it feels...it feels like...like disintegration, Will fills in the blanks as Riley tries to find the best word to describe it and fails. Like turning into nothing, Lito adds, eyes shining with a sheen of tears. Like surrendering without a fight, Sun scowls, clenching her hands into fists. Like suddenly ceasing to exist without first dying, Capheus sighs, rubbing a hand across his face.

His absence a vacuum sucking them all in, they ache.

They would do anything to save any member of their cluster; of course they would and they have, on many occasions. They would go to extreme lengths, risk everything, to guarantee the safety of their _family_. But with Wolfgang, there’s something even more primal about it, something like animal instinct, as inevitable a fate as being shot in the face point-blank. Like if anything were to happen to him, if he were to die, the whole cluster would fall apart with him. It was a feeling that they all shared, as collective as their loathing for BPO; like a shared, undisputed religious belief that they kept protected within the far recesses of their minds; that made them drop everything and take the first flight to London without a second thought.

Silently, they all reached the conclusion that losing Wolfgang would be catastrophic to the survival of the whole cluster. Even the mere thought of losing him has been putting them all through absolute hell. The blockers have stopped them from sharing Wolfgang’s suffering, but the absence left in their wake is a different kind of agony that none of them can escape.

They would kill, they would set fire to the world, they would cause hell and chaos and not think twice about it; they would throw all of their principles out of the window, they would even die, if it came to that, if it was the only way left to save Wolfgang.

 _We’re coming for you, Wolfgang. Hang on._ They all think at the same time, but they can’t hear each other’s thoughts, but they see the unshakable resolve reflected in their eyes. Wolfgang can’t hear them either, he can’t see their eyes, but they are hoping that he will hold on, in spite of it all.

The center just has to hold on for all of them to survive.

 

*******

 

They have Whispers. They have Jonas. Will tells him once he wakes up to the lines of worry and tension etched deep into the cop’s forehead, and the dark bags under his faded blue eyes. He hasn’t slept peacefully for a long while. But he smiles warmly at him when Wolfgang tells him, in a weak, cracked voice, “Good. I’m gonna fucking kill him now.”

“It’s good to have you back.” Will brushes the back of his hand over Wolfgang’s cheek, tenderly, lovingly, there is a dull ache pulsing beneath the contact which Wolfgang welcomes with an inward sigh of content. This is a different kind of pain. This pain is grounding, reminding him of his presence; of Will’s. Of his whole cluster’s, who are crowding around his bed with bated breaths and anxious stares.

He missed them.

He almost chokes on the feeling, a lump suddenly blocking his airways. He panics, for a moment thinking he’s back with Whispers again, the phantom pain of electric shock buzzing inside his head and blurring the edges of his sight. Will registers his panic and tightens his hold around his wrist in an attempt to keep him grounded in here and now, while around him the cluster gasp in the pain that he inadvertently let bleed through their shared connections. Will drops a gentle kiss on his parched lips as the pain and panic intensify, and Wolfgang throws himself into the kiss like a man starved for affection all his life, devouring Will’s mouth, which isn’t just his anymore, but Kala’s (he has forgotten the taste and it aches and he yearns), and Riley’s (this is the first time he is kissing her, he thinks with an abject sense of wonder), and then Nomi’s (he recalls the shape of her mouth pressed upon his wet cheek from that time in the whirlpool almost an aeon ago). He feels Lito’s stubble scratching along the soft skin of his neck, Sun’s fingers carding soothingly through his hair, Capheus squeezing his hand reassuringly. He is safe. He finally feels whole again. He has finally gotten back up although his body is still lying down. He exists in seven other bodies at the same time, and he has never felt more alive.

“There’s someone else who’s been dying to see you.”

Wolfgang’s breath hitches as Will moves away to walk toward the door. In his absence, Kala leans close and touches his well-kissed lips with the pads of her fingers, tenderly, as if he’s fragile; almost reverently, as if he’s sacred. Her dark eyes boring into his with unadulterated love and wanting, like the last time they did before everything went to hell.

He had gone insane worrying himself sick about her. He had been so fucking scared.

And now they have dragged him out of hell, against all odds, and he is still too rough around the edges and even the most basic and necessary task like breathing hurts to the point he keeps delaying it as long as he can, but he is here, surrounded by his family, and he won’t rest easy until he has his revenge.

Will opens the door, gestures for the one on the other side to come in, while the rest of the cluster place their hands on his tense shoulders, reminding him of their presence, of their immense love and support, also of their fear and anguish in the time he had been taken away from them. He hasn’t dared yet to ask if any of them is physically there in the room with him or just visiting or even mere hallucinations made up by his feverish, melting mind. He is pumped with too many drugs to know the difference and for now, that’s alright.

“Wolfie.”

But there is someone here that he knows is not a figment of his imagination. He feels those large hands cradling his face, the wisps of longish dark hair tickling his clammy skin, the warmth of his breath ghosting over his lips. He is real. He can’t be anything but real.

“Wolfie.” Felix says his name again, this time with a strangled sound of anguished sob and relieved laughter, his blue eyes wide and scared and unblinking and wet.

Felix is here.

“Hey.” He greets his brother with brows drawn together against the sharp pain shooting through his skull. He remembers his mental struggles against the pain Whispers and other BPO assholes inflicted on him so that he wouldn’t say anything about Felix. After kala, he suspected his cluster had gone on blockers. He couldn’t visit them even if his mind broke under torture. But his thoughts kept returning to Felix and he was so scared of having compromised his safety without even being aware of it that the sharp pain of electrocution and the drugs coursing through his veins, the beatings and the taunting and the threats, did not register with him anymore.

For the most part during his torture, he had been afloat and weightless, drifting away in deep space and endless oceans. And now coming back to solid ground, surrounded by the people he would do anything to protect, Wolfgang feels a heavy weight settled against his chest, making it hard to breathe, the thought of revenge the only thing keeping him from giving in to the blissful darkness, from going back to that safe place where nothing mattered so nothing hurt, from giving it all up, cutting the cord, rising up to the sky like a hot air balloon.  

Wolfgang takes a shaky breath, disentangles his mind from the seductive whispers of those destructive thoughts, and grabs the back of Felix’ head to bring his face even closer to his, not minding the tears that are falling on his cheeks from Felix’s eyes. In a sense, they are sharing these tears, sharing this acute sense of relief and fear, together. In a sense, Wolfgang and Felix are a cluster of their own.  

“I went back to your place. There was blood on the floor, and your gun too, and your bag was half-packed. I knew they got you. I thought you were dead.”

 _Most of the time, I wished I were_ , but that isn’t what he tells Felix and he feels a peculiar sense of relief that Felix doesn’t live inside his mess of a headspace. Briefly he wonders about how Felix had received the news about him being a sensate, about his cluster sharing a collective consciousness with him, but he doesn’t linger long on that thread of thought.

“Sorry.” Because he can’t say anything else that could be true and still be easy for him to articulate.

“Hey, Wolfie...it’s okay if they got you. I mean, it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t make a mistake. You knew they were coming and there was nothing you could do to stop them. I’m just really glad you’re not dead.”

 _Some things in our lives are inevitable._ Like this endless cycle of loss and revenge. Get hit and hit back. Get knocked down and drag them all down with you, then get back to your feet and fight your way through each fucking day. To finally get to this point, to finally get home, to finally have this.

It’s worth it. This is the meaning to Wolfgang’s whole existence. And if he has to kill for it, if he has to get punched and tortured for it, if he has to get dragged along the way for it, he will make it, he will take the meaning and make a run for it, he will never give up.

Wolfgang sits up in bed, ignoring the pain (and it’s now such an easy thing to do that he almost smirks - what hadn’t killed him apparently made him even stronger) and pulls Felix close, resting his cheek against the side of the other man’s face. Felix puts his arms around Wolfgang’s shoulders and they share a rough hug for a few seconds. It’s quiet in the dim, dusty room except for Wolfgang’s heavy breathing and Felix’s soft sniffles.  

All sounds in his head have quieted down, too, and Wolfgang feels grateful for that.

“I’m glad I’m not dead, too.” And it’s the truth, and the weight of it rests lightly on his thoughts. If he were dead right now, he would not have been able to have Felix’s arms around him, sharing this moment together, feeling safe and loved. If he were dead, all meanings were lost, nothing would have meant anything to him right now.

 _What is best in life, ha?_ The all-too-familiar words brush against his mind, uttered almost teasingly in Will’s voice. Felix’s arms tighten around him in response. And seven other pairs of arms, too, all at once. Their little sighs of content brushing softly across his face like a spring breeze.

 _Wolfgang,_ they all breathe his name in unison and Wolfgang feels his lips stretch into a tentative smile for the first time in a very long while.

“Us,” he says simply through the smile, as he holds on to them for dear life. _All of us._

 


End file.
